Examining your own making: what you did, why, what happened, and what the work now knows that you did not.
- +Fits Pragmatism, Phenomenology, Feminism, New Materialism
- –Tension with Positivism
Key thinkers: Donald Schön, Robin Nelson, Barbara Bolt
The longer story
Practice research needs a way of turning making into knowledge that someone else can use. Reflection on practice is that step: going back over what you did, with your documentation in hand, and asking what was decided, what was discovered and what surprised you.
Schön distinguished reflection-in-action (the adjustments you make while working) from reflection-on-action (the thinking afterwards). Both count, but only the second usually reaches the thesis. The danger is writing a flattering story after the event. The safeguard is evidence: dated notes, versions, recordings and failures, so that the reflection can be checked against what happened.